Teens launch phone app to keep tabs on police brutality

Police brutality may seem like a subject best handled by lawmakers and political advocates, but three teenagers from Georgia are hoping to shed light on the problem and promote good behavior with a new app they’ve developed.

Called “Five-O,” the app
has been designed specifically for mobile phones and encourages
users to record and document every encounter they have with
police officers. By doing so, users can submit ratings for local
law enforcement, allowing people to see how each area’s police
departments stack up in terms of civil behavior.

Speaking with Business Insider, 16-year-old Ima Christian
of Decatur, Georgia, said her siblings came up with the idea
after regularly hearing reports of police abuse around the United
States.

"We’ve been hearing about the negative instances in the news,
for instance most recently the Michael Brown case, and we always
talk about these issues with our parents," she said.
"They always try to reinforce that we should focus on
solutions. It's important to talk about the issues, but they try
to make us focus on finding solutions. That made us think why
don't we create an app to help us solve this problem."

The app itself – which is already available for Android devices
and should be on Apple’s App Store soon – is already drawing
comparisons to Yelp. Not only can users report instances of
verbal and physical abuse by police, but they can also rate an
individual officer’s behavior with a grade ranging from A to F.
Ratings for each officer are stored and can be viewed by anyone,
and the app separates department reviews by county so that
neighboring residents can see how service differs outside of
their immediate area.

Additionally, Five-O has a “Know Your Rights” section featuring
information from the American Civil Liberties Union. According to
ThinkProgress, citizens will be able to
provide as much background on an incident as they like, and in
instances requiring legal action, that data can be sent directly
to law enforcement.

“We’d like to know which regions in the US provide horrible
law enforcement services as well as highlight the agencies that
are highly rated by their citizens,” Ima said to the
website. “In addition to putting more power into the hands of
citizens when interacting with law enforcement, we believe that
highly rated police departments should be used as models for
those that fail at providing quality law enforcement
services.”

Ima also emphasized that the family’s intention isn’t to focus
solely on bad behavior, and that they’d like people to report
good encounters with police as well.

"If someone has a positive interaction with the police … for
example, an officer saved your cat, or was very courteous and
professional, we want people to be able to document that
too," she said to Buzzfeed. "We hope that law enforcement
agencies with positive reviews can help by functioning as role
models.”